Oracle continued to pursue its shop therapy prescription for a sluggish economy this week, buying up the intellectual property assets of Conformia Software, a provider of PLM software for life sciences companies, for an undisclosed amount.

The move follows Oracle’s March acquisition of Relsys International, a maker of drug safety and risk management applications for pharmaceutical, life sciences, and medical device companies, and its April agreement to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion.

This week’s purchase brings to Oracle products and technology that enable “life sciences companies to manage drug design, development, and transfer to production across bio, pharmaceutical, and chemical drug components,” according to Oracle’s announcement. The company plans to integrate the Conformia Product and Process Lifecycle Management (PPLM) software and technology into the Oracle Agile PLM suite and to provide integrations to Oracle Health Sciences applications and third-party systems. “This combination will enable pharmaceutical and bio-technology companies to accelerate innovation, meet regulatory objectives, and improve productivity,” Oracle said in its announcement.

Conformia, which was founded in 2000 as RIVA Commerce, has had ties to Oracle rival SAP since 2007. That year, SAP’s NetWeaver Fund made a minority investment in Conformia, and the two companies entered a technology and marketing partnership under which Conformia said it would integrate its Development Operations Management Solution with SAP’s enterprise offerings.

A spokesman for SAP said today that his company was not interested in acquiring Conformia for “multiple reasons,” despite its earlier investment. He declined to elaborate on those reasons. SAP’s venture capital group makes investments with an eye toward supporting interesting technologies, nurturing smaller companies, and producing “a return on capital for SAP,” he said, and not necessarily acquiring the recipient. “We’re partnered well in this space with Aris Global,” he said, adding that SAP would not be looking to “mirror Oracle” in acquiring a company like Conformia.

Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang today said Oracle has been building up its health sciences suite, particularly in the growing drug discovery segment. Conformia’s technology fits well with that strategy, he said, as it is highly specialized and focuses on building in compliance and traceability throughout the process product lifecycle. “The value in the company is in its intellectual property,” he said of Conformia. “All [Oracle] acquired is the IP — the technology and the code base, not the people.”

Efforts to reach Conformia today for comment were unsuccessful, and the company’s website was inaccessible.

An Oracle spokeswoman said the company had no comment beyond its announcement. Oracle will announce it fourth-quarter and year-end earnings results next week, June 23.